Groupons model is awesome... for groupon. It makes the customers of business X customers of Groupon instead. And the best part is, Business X paid Groupon for the opportunity to steal their own customers.

This is an idiotic viewpoint. First, you are start out with the perfect valid point that material sciences would need to leap a few thousand years. That's reasonable, true, and a good point. Then you go on to say this is impossible using the scientific method, because in fact the "first" material scientists were not scientists. They were guys that worked with metal all day ever day... hey wait a minute...and kept trying new things...hey!... and invented new materials and processes...

You really want to stick with that?

No one said "religion". Pretty much everyone said Christianity, Catholicism, and Muslims ruined it all. The rest never tried to use fear and ignorance as weapons or control mechanisms. But chances are you are one of those three, so you don't see it that way.

That's okay. No one asked you why they should wear a wrist watch.

No one asked me either, but here are a couple of reasons.
Fashion. Yes, it's pathetic, but wearing a nice watch goes a long way when meeting with new clients. I don't have an expensive watch, I just have a nice looking one. It's huge too.
TIME... I like to be able to tell time, accurately and quickly. You say you can spot the time in all these places, with different clocks at each. Are they synchronized? I doubt it. So at any given moment, you might be off by 10 minutes in any given direction. That's super useful. I take it you don't do anything time sensitive?
Manners: Pulling out your cell phone to check the time is less than subtle. In some situations, it's downright rude. Some of us prefer not to be rude. I know, you probably aren't one of them.

Great movie, it was all I could think of when I read the summary. I was deeply disappointed to not see "h3" in the summary.

The bosses are fools for not building in redundancy, but they would be worse fools for ignoring true factors that can affect job performance. I would hire a woman if she were the best for a particular position, but if she went on maternity leave during a critical time, she would come back to find she was the CO-whatever. Because someone has to do the job, and if no one else does it, I have to, and that means my wife will kill me, and then NO ONE gets a paycheck.

You can get a great job, sure. But your skills and qualifications have almost nothing to do with getting venture capital. Getting venture capital means getting liked by the guys in charge... almost entirely male, almost entirely white, and usually from the privileged class. As someone trying to get venture capital for my company, I've been dealing with a lot of these guys for months now. It's pretty cluby.

But then, I'm learning there are better ways than traditional venture capital. Like knowing someone with too much money.

We just need a new class of politician. Someone that will lie to the corporations, and work for the people.

AHAHAHAHA... so we just need to find someone that doesn't want outrageous amounts of money and power.

Can you quantify in meaningful terms why the Iphone 4 is a better phone than any given android? (say a galaxy S for example) You can leave off trying to explain how a walled garden is better than root control, because we both know it's not. (I'm an expert with computer devices, I don't need protection from myself) Let us talk features, function, hell even form. What makes the Iphone 4 so bad ass? I really would like to know, as I'll be buying a new phone in the near future.

Mainly I'm just curious what specific things make an Iphone4 interesting when compared to the plethora of other handsets, operating systems and software.

All other factors being ignored, did you just call Mass Media "complete and honest"? Because... I've got some bad news for you.

/me buys you a drink

It's not often that I come across someone that can make a rational case for behavior disorder in our society. This is it. The video games didn't do, the books didn't do it, the TV didn't do it. YOUR SHITTY PARENTING DID IT. That message needs to be repeated as loudly as we can manage, because until that message is considered dogma, we aren't going to see any social change worth noting.

Another round?

In what fantasy world do you live in? Because it isn't Earth. Here, we don't have robots that can do even a fraction of what a man can do. We certainly don't have any that are reliable at doing that fraction.

You say any "no brainer" job can be done by a robot. Explain why Tacobell employes 50 people per store (average)? Can't a robot make a taco? Or did you just forget to mention economies of scale and their MASSIVE importance in these discussions? You say "a large number of medium skill jobs have been turned into applications like MS office". I don't think "skill" means what you think it means. I work in a law office, I had to learn to type to work here. Type, on an IBM selectric II. I hadn't even seen one since I was 10. MS office does not replace the person doing the typing, it replaces the typewriter, and not that well actually. That being said, with my background (document imaging/management) I could easily design a paperless office system that replaced all the file cabinets, all the forms and all the typewriters with computer gear and robots. Even using todays tech. It would cost several hundred times more than it costs to employ someone like me. That isn't going to change anytime soon.

Receptionists... here is another one I'm going to argue about. The simple answer is, no they have not. The only place a robot replaces a receptionist is on extremely large volume lines. Any company that doesn't have a receptionist at the front desk answering phones and managing guests is tiny. Maybe you don't work in the business world, but here, everything gets done with a phone call, to a human being. Maybe you work in tech, like google, where they don't believe in answering phones. They will learn.

As for the rest of this, essentially what you appear to be saying is that you are terrified of automation. Well, that tells me you are a low level grunt with no skills beyond your ability to perform menial tasks. Because what automation has been doing for the world since a long time before you were born is this: It takes the menial work off the hands of people, and allows them to pursue other interests or work. No rational person is going to cry about the lost jobs on the bottom of the scale. Unless... Maybe you like the idea of a Caste system?

How much do you want your food to cost? Already, farmers are paying $10.48/hr for seasonal workers under the H-2a program.

It's naive to think that you can pay every single person a living wage for every single job. In fact, it's considerably worse than naive, you either do not have a firm grip on reality, or you know nothing what so ever about economics.

That's more than twice what I made at my first job when I was 16. You'd think teenagers (hey, why do we have a break in the middle of the school year?) would jump at the chance to make some extra cash. The reason they don't is simple. It's hard work. Starbucks will pay you something close to that to stand around in an air conditioned building and make awful coffee. It takes no particular skills. Meanwhile, a job that involves actual WORK is ignored by the vast majority... because it's too hard. You lazy pansies... You know what's wrong with this country? Lazy people that think their lifestyle should be GIVEN to them.

I wonder if you would feel the same way if, in 1956 they had felt as you do. You would not have computers. You would not have internet. You would not have refrigeration technology that is clean, self contained and safe. You would not have "freeze dried" foods, you would not have satelites, or geo-imaging. You wouldn't have super sonic aircraft. Among the many other things you would not have today, if it were not for the cold war and the space program.

I understand your point, it's time to get the budget under control, however, I think we could probably just stop going to war half way around the world and get that handled just fine. In fact, I have proposal. End all active US occupations, reroute all the personnel and money into space projects, including "fuel scooping" from stars or gas giants. All the hydrocarbons or heavy elements you could possibly use in 100 generations are sitting out there just waiting for someone to take them. Not only would this give our military the continued and further "edge" that makes them the "best". (you want orbital insertion drop ships, admit it) But it also means that the silly oil reserves in the middle east are worthless and tiny when taken against the vast resources of Jupiter and her moons.

OR, you can continue to decry space funding, while enjoying your position on top of the world... until the resources really do start to get thin, and then what? WAR. And if you are very very lucky, China will be on your side. If you aren't, your country might survive long enough to become a third world hell hole. By which point it will be too late to get into space, because morons without any foresight decided that it was a waste of money when there were more pressing humanitarian needs. FFS. They aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, large portions are inclusive. But I don't figure the people here complaining about space funding are likely to grasp that.

I'm about to blow 10 mod points, all so I can inform you exactly why your question is utterly unacceptable. That is to say... what in the hell is wrong with you? Should we spend money on cutting edge science and technology? YES. Unequivocally. I wonder, do you have any idea what the space program did for the state of the art in a dozen fields? Are you even slightly aware that the entire computer culture you enjoy today started in the Apollo program? Texas instruments created the first IC for the Apollo program.

Even more fundamental than that, we live on a planet. 1 planet. Which we know goes through various cycles which are not necessarily conducive to the continued existence of complicated life forms. At the most fundamental level, "space" exploration is our only long term chance at survival. If you can't understand that, I would ask that you hold your tongue and let the adults with worthy opinions dominate the discussion. I'm not saying we need to get humans off of earth on colonies, although I do support that idea, I'm saying that the technology we gain from trying to do things that are "impossible" (moon landing), is fundamental to our continued survival on this biosphere, which we seem to be destroying or altering at alarming rates. Oh, you don't believe in anthropomorphic environmental change? Then you are a fucking moron. In the last 100 years, 60% of the trees on earth have been cut down. If that ALONE isn't a major change in your mind, you can't possibly be smart enough to participate in this discussion.

Not only is space our most likely savior in terms of resources, survival and technological enhancement, it's also one of two "frontiers" that are still left. All other things being forgotten, exploring the frontiers is good enough reason. We as a species knew that 100 years ago. Why did we forget it?